Soft like Steel
by blondevor
Summary: NikitaMichael introspective written pre Season 4, contains Season 3 spoiler. Just a bit of fluff I wrote years ago.


Disclaimer: Don't own any of it and this is just for fun.

Archive: Sure but let me know where.

Reviews: Please, pretty please. Just don't be outright nasty. Thanks.  
  
Nikita chose her sunglasses carefully. She'd had a rough night last night and the effects of it showed in the puffiness around her eyes. She would need to cover that. No one in Section cried, at least not openly, unless they were in the white room under Madeline's expert touch. On days like today she was grateful for the arts of deception she'd been taught early on. Operations didn't want to see the truth or consequences of action, primarily his actions. He only wanted to see you doing what you were told to do. That was at least, as Nikita had chosen to view it, a twisted part of the truth. Operatives at Section were very good at doing what they were told to do. Their lives and the lives of those around them depended on it. She only wondered whose life she cared for more, whose life she killed for, the innocent or the condemned.  
  
Covered to an acceptable level, Nikita left her quarters only to find that the walk to the briefing room was too short as usual. She knew that the slightest distraction on her part would not be tolerated and would be viewed as less than optimal performance; that was not something she could afford. Operations would like nothing more than to have an excuse to take her out of play. She closed her eyes and remembered him with Bauer in the perch, toasting with champagne, after she and Michael had become Peter and Sage. After all those innocent people had died in that building. She could feel her blood starting to pound and the regret that she hadn't killed that slime when she'd had the chance pooled in her stomach. Shake it off Nikita! Shades of gray, Madeline had said. Nikita couldn't find in herself to agree with her. She painted. She knew just how little black it took to contaminate the pure titanium white, very very little. But...abeyance was not where she wanted to be and Michael could only protect her so far so she would swallow the revulsion down and keep on going.  
  
Contemplating her jumbled mind, Nikita knew that the moments when she was alone sometimes proved the most difficult. For everyone else in section they were probably treasured gems; the only time they weren't trading their soul for the greater good of all mankind and the option of living another day. But not for Nikita, no, she usually spent her downtime in her apartment contemplating all sorts of things that Madeline would love to chat about. Not that Madeline would need to, Nikita was well aware that she was getting quite good at her own disgusting mind fucks. No wonder half the time she awaited downtime with dread. At least on close quarter standby Section was always abuzz with the worlds latest terrorist threat or catastrophe. Those things she knew how to handle...but the moments alone, those frightened her. She felt stronger against an enemy's hands than her own. Her own knew her too well.  
  
When she had time to look into the abyss that had become her mind she didn't like what she saw. She was however unsure what she liked least. The way she could go on a mission, pull a trigger, break a neck, seduce to kill...or the way she could come back from it all and laugh with Walter, gently dip her teabag into a cup or arrange flowers in a vase; all the while pretending that hers was a normal existence. It was funny really how easy it was to give the illusion of normalcy when you were dead. Dead to a world that still worried about the little things. Dead to a world that had never seen the horrors she had seen. Dead to a world that still believed in the heroes in comic books. Dead except to the other dead souls living in the purgatory they called Section where heroes were killers and their victims were even worse.  
  
Not long ago Nikita had finally come to the painful conclusion that everything in Section was an illusion. Actions, an illusion, a means to an end. Words, an illusion, searching for the favorable response or reaction. Touch, an illusion, used to deceive. Illusions within illusions. Reality had long ago disappeared, replaced by Section's prime directive, which was to be achieved at all costs. Everything else was, simply, expendable. She was merely a puppet, like all the other operatives, with Madeline and Operations at their strings. Houdini would have been jealous to see the skills taught mere criminals, Nikita thought. Oh yes, he would have envied Michael. Not that very many didn't...he was after all, the greatest illusionist of them all.  
  
And the greatest reason that she hated to be left alone. Alone with the memory of his touch, his caress, the French words spoken in her ear like smooth pearls on skin. Alone with his green eyed heat boring into her heart, smoldering. Alone with the knowledge that he would never love her as she loved him, always lie to her, always use her. And yet she could run to the ends of the earth and not escape the feeling of his hand gently, lovingly, running itself down the side of her cheek. The same hand that had backhanded her countless times during the first two years of her training as his material. The same hand that had made love to her body. The same hand she had watched kill. The hand of the only man she would ever truly love. With her nostrils flared, she scoffed at that thought which had risen unbidden. How could she love him?  
  
Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Michael was her mentor and trainer in a strange land and eventually her lover as well. He had become her reason for living when no other reason could be found. In return she had given him the same gift when he had been "killed off" on his blood cover mission and separated from his son Adam. They were now even. She could feel it. And though she was loath to admit it, she had preferred it when they were not. Michael was her best strength and her worst weakness and Section often used him as both. She knew he was as battered as the rest of them. They were all Section's whores, sent to do their servicing. No one was immune, not even Michael.  
  
Who they were was inescapable, she knew this. But sometimes, on days like today, all the justifications she could drum up fell flat on her ears and she just couldn't take it. Couldn't take the coldness seeping from Michael's pores when he chose to. Couldn't take the patented blank stare. Couldn't take the lies and hearing him say "I'm sorry" one more time. Couldn't take that he, both, intrigued and disgusted her. Couldn't take that they could never really be together, for whatever he had to offer.  
  
Yes, it had been better when one or the other owed something. It kept her on her toes, looking over her shoulder, waiting for the day when he didn't walk back in through van access in one piece. The expected was always easier to survive through. Survival of the fittest certainly prevailed here at Section, she thought, the best adapted to their environment. Well she would never adapt to a world that pulled screaming babies from their mother's arms...so she had to fight longer and harder than the rest of them. And that was how she came to find herself practically running down the corridor, not bothering to look around at the curious stares and the turned heads. This was often how she ended up in the bowels of Section where the slow of her steps was amplified by the decrease in noise, where she could finally feel her heartbeat again so she would know that she was still alive. Nikita ran her hand slowly across the hard cold steel of the beams as she walked, her long fingers trailing. She loved the harsh metal beneath her touch. It never ceased to amaze her how unaffected it was by anything. How she longed to be more like it...  
  
Michael watched Nikita from the cam on his laptop...as he often watched her. Watched the myriad of emotions pass over her features, watched the passion run through her veins, watched her inner flame dim only to be lit again when she was needed. She was stronger than any of them and what kept her going even death couldn't touch. It fascinated him that she wasn't driven by the same desire as all the others, the desire to simply stay alive. No, not Nikita, she wouldn't be satisfied just by that. She would never be satisfied until she had saved not only her own soul but also the souls of all those around her. He sighed from his hidden place. She would never know how she had saved him. How through every dark moment, around every sinister corner he turned, she was what kept him alive, kept him going, kept him from turning his gun on himself. If he could help her save one more soul, make her smile one more time, make her love him just a little bit more than he could ever let her know he loved her...god knows he KNEW how selfish it was...but it was what it was. He needed her. At least he was honest with himself on that count. Not that it was enough. Nothing born out of Section could be enough. Nothing that he could ever give her could possibly be enough. She deserved so much more he knew. The knowledge hurt, oh how it hurt, but it was all he had to keep himself from her, at a safe enough distance.  
  
She continued to walk the corridor...he continued to watch. It was a cat and mouse game if ever one was. He prayed, as much as any sinner could, for the strength to go on if it ever ended. He could only protect her so much, not that he wouldn't die trying. He hoped as he watched her that the little goodness he saw in himself was not just an extension of her, not just the part of Nikita that lived in him...because God help him if it was. God help him if the day came when she didn't come back and all he was left with was what he was before she had come.


End file.
